student-feedback on S Anand

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Tools in Data Science Sep 2025 edition is live: https://tds.s-anand.net/. Major update: a new AI-Coding section and fresh projects.

I teach TDS at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras as part of the BS in Data Science. Anyone can audit. The course is public. You can read the content and practice assessments.

I fed the May 2025 term student feedback into The Sales Mind and asked:

What are the top non-intuitive / surprising inferences?
What are interesting observations?
What are high impact actions?

Full analysis: https://lnkd.in/gVWVqaxN: summary, outliers, and action ideas.

Most students find the course tough (or at least time-consuming), especially the Remote Online Exam (ROE).

Surprise: students who mentioned ROE time limits rated it 2.61 vs 2.33 (+12%!). Those who felt time pressure also saw more value – suggesting “desirable difficulty,” rather than frustration.

A minority even asked for tougher projects.

The main actions are faster feedback loops, automated pre-checks, mock ROEs, clear rubrics, etc.

But my two takeaways are:

Students value rigor and challenge, even if it makes the course harder.
Using LLMs to analyze student feedback is a force multiplier for instructors.

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Tools in Data Science Sep 2025 edition is live: https://tds.s-anand.net/. Major update: a new AI-Coding section and fresh projects.

I teach TDS at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras as part of the BS in Data Science. Anyone can audit. The course is public. You can read the content and practice assessments.

I fed the May 2025 term student feedback into The Sales Mind and asked:

What are the top non-intuitive / surprising inferences?

What are interesting observations?

What are high impact actions?

Full analysis: https://chatgpt.com/share/68cba081-afc0-800c-9da3-75222e84a499: summary, outliers, and action ideas.

Most students find the course tough (or at least time-consuming), especially the Remote Online Exam (ROE).

Surprise: students who mentioned ROE time limits rated it 2.61 vs 2.33 (+12%!). Those who felt time pressure also saw more value – suggesting “desirable difficulty,” rather than frustration.

A minority even asked for tougher projects.

The main actions are faster feedback loops, automated pre-checks, mock ROEs, clear rubrics, etc.

But my two takeaways are:

Students value rigor and challenge, even if it makes the course harder.
Using LLMs to analyze student feedback is a force multiplier for instructors.

Feedback for TDS Jan 2025

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 16:43:11 +0000

When I feel completely useless, it helps to look at nice things people have said about my work.

In this case, it’s the feedback for my Tools in Data Science course last term. Here are the ones I enjoyed reading.

Having a coding background, the first GA seemed really easy. So I started the course thinking that it’ll be an easy S grade course for me. Oh how wrong was I!!

The sleepless nights cursing my laptop for freezing while my docker image installed huge CUDA libraries with sentence-transformers; and then finding ways to make sure it does not, and then getting rid of the library itself, it’s just one example of how I was forced to become better by finding better solutions to multiple problems. This is one of the hardest, most frustrating and the most satisfying learning experience I’ve ever had, besides learning ML from Arun sir.

@s.anand sir did a tremendous job of designing this course. I feel this course ties every other course together by applying learnings from each course and building further upon them. I learnt development in python and APIs in MAD-1, JS in MAD-2, bash scripting in SC, SQL in DBMS, data structures in PDSA and TDS had applications of each. In MAD projects, we made an app and submitted it as zip file. Here we went on to learn to containerise our app and deploy and also make the process automated. Our apps combined python and shell scripting along with the power of LLMs. Yeah the projects did seem extremely overwhelming but the learning is invaluable.

@Jivraj @Saransh_Saini @Carlton I’m sure it wasn’t an easy task being the TA of this course. Thanks for all the help throughout the term with the Mock ROEs, project sessions and clearing doubts in discourse and live sessions.

I still got an S grade but it was a very hard-fought S with the help of some luck. I’d love to follow the changes this course goes through in the upcoming terms.

This course was the most exciting and memorable of all the courses I have taken so far (actually of all the courses in the diploma level, I have completed all 🙂 by now ). I had the technical background and as @22f3000819 mentioned I thought it was going to be an easy ride but I was wrong. It was challenging as well as fun at the same time.

The best part of the course is that it is open internet and we are free to explore, use LLMs and get the things done. This way of learning to me is the most effective. I have the guide and now I can devise how I should approach the things.

Everything ROE, Project 1, Project 2 was quite challenging and fun at the same time. Projects were the best part of the course. I learned how things can go wrong when we deploy it. I collaborated with @ItsMeAlex, @trebhuvansb, @23f1002382 and @22f3002933 for Project 2.
My Project 2 repo even got 17 forks and 4 stars and scored 20/20 on evaluation. This adventure ended with the relaxing end term paper and an overall “S” grade.

Also I must say the support team of TDS is the best so far in the program. I had conversation with @Jivraj, @Saransh_Saini and @Carlton sir and they are super helpful. I would really miss these sessions. I attended the live sessions by @s.anand sir and sir’s take on the questions were really insightful and even made me think differently than my perspective.

When we do something different it ought to have challenges both operational and technical but the TDS support team tried to give its best. Many a times I too had raised concerns but the team tried to resolve it to their best capabilities.

At last I would like to say, without any hesitation, I had experienced the best part of the program till now in the last 3-4 months. Hoping to meet the team and my fellow peers in person during the Paradox 🙂.

My TDS Journey
“A Tale of Bugs, Chaos & Miraculous Comebacks” 😅📊🔥

So, I did something bold (or reckless, depends on how you see it)—took the TDS (Tools in Data Science) course right in my first term. Why? Because curiosity got the better of me, and I thought, “Eh, GA1 went fine, how hard could it be?” (Spoiler: Very hard.) Not a decision I recommend unless you’re into academic masochism. 😅

The first few modules hit me like three courses merged into one 📚. Maybe because I was totally unprepared, maybe because TDS has a secret pact with chaos.
Did all 7 GA …it was very time consuming but fun too …learnt new tools with every question. But hey, the live lectures were fantastic 🎤, the modules were well-structured 🏗️, and thank goodness for the lifesaving Discourse forum and group, where the real MVPs reside 🏆.

Then came Project 1. Ah yes, my nemesis. I’d write code, it would run perfectly, then—bam! A random error just to keep things from getting doable⚠️. Was it 404? 500? Who knows! I basically developed muscle memory for every error code in existence 💻🤯. The grand result? 2/20. At this point, my grade looked like it had fallen off a cliff 🏔️, and I wasn’t sure if I could salvage an B—or even a C, honestly… with -18 in my balance due to P1 and a trauma for P2 I couldn’t have expected more… no?

Entered the TA sessions and peer-powered survival squad 🛡️—my saving grace. ROE, the supposedly impossible exam, where I thought even a 50% would be a miracle?..got 100%. Same for Project 2—100%. Even after initially refusing to believe it, reality set in, and my **end-term score also landed around 90 ** (thanks to the PYQs and those 300 github ques…definitely recommending the next term student to solve and understand all the pyqs fr), then wrapping the final score with some gift wrappers of a few bonus marks… this deal got sealed with a confident A …

.🥁…drumrolls…🥁

An 🎉A. 🎉

This course was brutal, but in the best way possible 💡. It threw me into battles with LLMs, never-ending questions, and existential crises over debugging 🔍. But now, I have actual skills (and scars) that I’ll carry into my future projects of MAD1, MAD2, MLP, and BDM which will be a whole new experience🚀.

Looking back, the syllabus was a wild mix of survival skills and superpowers—building models, deploying them, wrestling with LLMs, and somehow convincing messy data to behave. And just when we thought we had conquered it all, Project 1 pulled us into the abyss. Now, with Data Analysis and Visualization still in the works, the adventure wasn’t over. Because what’s data science without some surprises and flashy charts to flex? 😆📊

For future students? Take it later in the diploma, enjoy the mad ride, and remember—even if you bomb a project, there can always be a comeback. 🏆 TDS is tough, but resilience matters more than perfection. Even if you get 10/100(which I got) on a project, learn from it, adapt, and come back stronger.

Massive thanks to @s.anand sir for making this learning experience possible, and a special shoutout to @Carlton sir, @Saransh_Saini sir, and @Jivraj for patiently resolving our chaotic issues 🙏.
Your guidance made a challenging journey both rewarding and insightful. Grateful for everything!
TDS—difficult, enlightening, and totally worth it. 🤓✨

(This gracious furry benefactor granted us a deadline extension—P1 survivors can relate #thanks_to_carlton_sir, we know how crucial that was. So, signing off with a furry and really grateful thank you! 🐱 ⌛ 🎓)

Should courses be hard or easy?

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 07:28:34 +0000

Here’s a post I shared with the students of my Tools in Data Science course at IITM. This was in response to a student posting that:

The design of TDS course lecture videos are designed in such a way that it could be understood only by the data scientists not by the students like me who are entirely new to the field of data science. Though I have gone through 6 weeks of course lecture videos, I am not fully aware of the usage of ChromeDevTools, Bash, Github etc….

IITM Term 1: German. In my first term at IIT Madras (1992), I took German 1 with Prof D Subramanian.

The first words D.Subs said when he entered the room were, “Wer sind Sie?”

I had no clue what he was talking about. Nor did the others. After individually asking about a dozen students, Ashok Krishna replied, “Ich bin Ashok.” (He knew German.)

The rest of the term proceeded in the same vein. He threw us in the deep end, spoke only German, and I ended up with a “D” and learning very little German. Ashok Krishna thrived in that course.

IITM Term 2: German. In took German 2 with Mrs Schindler in the next term. The experience was very different. She explained each word. She had us listen to tapes in German. It was very relaxed.

I ended up with a “B” and learning very little German. (I’m not good with human languages.) But many others enjoyed it.

Which is better? I’m not sure. I think gentle courses are good for beginners and tough ones for advanced student, but classes usually have a mix of both. Aptitude and interest help, too.

IITM Term 1: Physics. Prof. PC Deshmukh handled our first physics course. (He was the one responsible for renaming Mardi Gras “Saarang”.) Our class felt the exams were too tough. My friend Badri and I explained this to him. “Well, you two should be lobbying for even tougher exams,” PCD said. “That’ll benefit smarter guys like you more.”

IIMB Term 1: Statistics. My classmate Athreya was a class representative for statistics (a tough subject.) Going against tradition, he lobbied for a tougher test. He was almost lynched afterwards.

Which is better? I’m not sure. An easy exam is good for student grades and morale. A tough exam is good for college reputation and advanced students. Classes usually need both.

In short, I have no clue.

Students who take this course learn several topics 3 months.

Faculty like me haven’t managed to learn how to calibrate course content or exams even after 3 years.

But, I’m learning. Thanks to you.

So please keep the feedback coming. We’ll keep improving. And thanks for putting up with us!

Comments

Tarun 22 Nov 2024 5:27 pm: Hmm thought provoking, my view is courses should be hard ..because we now live in a world of information overload .. the easy stuff is readily available, we just need to put in the effort to seek that information .. its the advanced bit which is still gold dust.
Mukundhan 22 Nov 2024 4:02 pm: An interested mind would love an advanced course, such courses are a rarity these days. But an advanced course without an “involved” instructor is useless. May be you need to prepare the students for the advanced topics- 1- Use a basic course or training material as a precursor 2- Be a lot more available for clarifying things at the start. 3- Keep the content & assignments hard, but the final evaluation easy or some mix of hard & easy. This will help students have a sense of achievement. 4- Evaluate for understanding and not absolute correctness in the assignments.